I loved writing a lot as a teenager and college student, since it was the easiest and most natural way to express myself and connect with others. Even now, years later, I can read my old writing and feel connected with my past self and derive something new from it.
I’ve been writing less in the last ten years because I’ve been busy with adulthood and juggling between English and Chinese. I used to write in Chinese, and now mostly write and communicate in English. However, I hadn’t given much thought to my own “writing voice” in either language till recently.
I started writing more in English on this blog a few month ago, and my girlfriend Laura has been a very supportive editor and writing tutor for me. The process of writing, researching, thinking, and editing can be painful, but it is almost always rewarding. My goal with writing now is to continue developing my own voice in my areas of interest.
During the process of writing my last article, it occurred to me that I could ask ChatGPT or any other LLM to generate content, as long as I provided my key messages. Given my intensive use of AI coding tools, I knew that AI could significantly affect my writing flow. So, I tried two tasks:
- Draft some bullet points and ask GPT-4.1 to complete the paragraph.
- Ask GPT-4.1 to edit and proofread the current version of my draft.
I spent an hour on the tasks and stopped writing. I was not sure how I felt about GPT-4.1’s help, since the conversation became a back-and-forth between me and GPT-4.1 about the writing, the words, and the content. I thought GPT-4.1 had too much power over what I was writing and which words I should use at that moment; it seemed to become a co-author of my own article if I continued to accept its suggestions.
Later on, I shared my AI writing experiment with Laura and we discussed how I could apply AI applications to my writing. She said she thinks it’s necessary for me to independently write my article without AI, and only use it for proofreading; even if it takes more time, trying to come up with my own words and iterating on them is the best way to develop my own voice and mastery of writing. Thus, using AI to complete a sentence or a paragraph would effectively take away the opportunity to learn those writing skills on my own. I majorly agree with her on these points, because I had felt my own autonomy as a writer being threatened in this experiment, and I believe writing is one of the most accessible and valuable channels of self expression.
I think our views on developing our own writing voice are influenced by our upbringing in the 90s and 2000s, without ChatGPT. When we were learning to write, we went through this iterative process with the help of peers, parents, or teachers. This is how we came to know what it means to develop one’s own style. It is similar to developing a taste in music, fashion, art, or calligraphy: the process may take years, but it builds up your sense of self. The grinding is unavoidable and worthwhile.
However, for kids born after 2015, if they grow up with LLM accessible everywhere, do they have the opportunity or incentive to develop their own writing voice? If they have not gone through the thinking, writing, editing, and iterating process, will they really appreciate the grinding and growth? I do feel concerned, given not only what I have heard from my peers, but also encountered personally.
Earlier this year, I interviewed a number of candidates with computer or data science degrees from the top US universities. This was my first experience interviewing candidates since the advent of ChatGPT and the economic slowdown in 2023. However, this interview experience shocked me, since most of the candidates failed to code basic Python pandas data manipulation functions like DataFrame.agg. I shared my experience with some peers, who told me of similar situations they encountered in interviews. When one of my peers directly asked the candidate how they passed their classes if they couldn’t code basic Python functions, the candidate replied that they used ChatGPT for their school assignments. This obviously reveals a major shift in education: students use ChatGPT and other LLMs for their coursework, and so do their teachers and professors. There are a lot of controversies and debates around using AI in classrooms nationwide.
I am generally an advocate of GenAI, since I think it’s a great tool for humans to offload tedious work to machines and focus on creative and critical tasks. AI coding tools have saved me a lot of time from digging into the internet or writing repetitive code. But I’m afraid that our next generation will lose their writing voice like we gradually abandoned handwriting because of computers and smartphones.
I am more worried about our next generation, because they are AI natives like millennials are TV natives. I grew up with TV, and I cannot imagine a world without visual entertainment. I enjoyed reading as a kid, but there was often a TV or a movie version of the same story. Like many people, I found my attention span became shorter and shorter in the last 10 to 15 years, and I consciously started to fight against the trend. When a kid grows up with access to short-form entertainment and LLMs at their fingertips, how can we make them see the value in grinding a path to develop their own writing voice?
To conclude, I want to end this article with a poem:
At the beginning, we stopped writing with hands
Then we used ChatGPT to reply to emails
Finally, we ask our phone to journal for us
Now, what is left for free will?
Photos by Florian Klauer on Unsplash